Not a Game
by TwinEnigma
Summary: The ninja of Gaming Country were fiercely loyal, so when one goes rogue, it's a big deal. Ryou was a good guy, this wasn't like him, and Anzu is determined to uncover the truth. One shot, friendship


**Not a Game**

_By TwinEnigma_

_Codes:_ AU, crossover with Naruto, fan art inspired.

_Disclaimer:_ All characters herein are not mine, nor do I make profit off of writing about them.

* * *

Anzu raced through the streets of the village, moving towards the south district and hoping she wasn't too late.

The village was pretty small, the only one in Game Country that didn't deal strictly in gambling, and provided the tiny country with it's admittedly small ninja corps. They were, by no means, any competition for even the weakest of the Great Elemental Nations and often had to hire out if anyone took serious interest in putting the hurt on their nation, but they were decent enough to at least protect their own land from the occasional riff-raff. And with the powers of their "dark" ninja bolstering their thin ranks, most gangsters trying to muscle in ended up looking for easier prey elsewhere.

Still, lives were precious here. They had too few comrades to afford losing anyone, and so everyone in the village was fiercely loyal to one another. Loyalty would keep what few comrades they had alive longer. From the first days she'd been a ninja, she and the others in her age group had loyalty and teamwork drilled into their heads until it they lived and breathed it.

So, when a horribly shaken Yugi returned from his mission on the north border and announced that Ryou had gone rogue, it was tantamount to dropping an explosive in the middle of the marketplace at high noon.

Worse, Ryou, like Yugi and a handful of others, was a dark ninja.

The dark ninja were the village's trump card, created to defend the village during the last Great Ninja War and endowed with great and terrible powers. The war ended, but the dark ninja were so powerful and useful that the village elders decided to keep using the secret process. Candidates were selected regularly at a young age and groomed as ninja. Only a handful of them would ever be selected to undergo the process and fewer still survived it. Those that did were irreparably changed and not always for the better: the trauma left poor Seto severely crippled emotionally and Malik with a split personality.

There had always been a fear that one of these days an enemy nation would get their hands on one of their dark ninja and drag the secret of the technique out of them, but they'd _never_ thought that one of their own would willingly betray them.

Anzu couldn't believe it. Ryou was probably the kindest, most loyal boy out of their age group. He, like most of the dark ninja, was utterly terrifying and savage in combat, his eyes turning from blue to inhuman red and his hair spiking wildly in the chakra currents, but he wasn't a threat to any of them. He knew who his friends were. This wasn't like him at all. What on earth had happened to him to make him want to betray the village? What the hell had he seen out there?

When she'd left the meeting, the elders were already talking about tracking Ryou down and killing him to keep him from spreading village secrets. Yugi was too shell-shocked to be of any help, his eyes flickering back and forth between his normal purple and the red that marked the dark ninja at an alarming rate. The others had split up: one group was staying with Yugi to find out what was going on and the other had left for the border to search for Ryou.

Anzu knew they wouldn't find him there.

She burst past the outlying houses of the southern district and hopped the fence for Training Ground #9, her sandals hitting the sandy dirt with a heavy smack. Training Ground #9 was partially wooded and used for practicing against targets in forested areas and underbrush. It was easy to get lost in there or tangled up in nasty plants.

It was also Ryou Bakura's favorite place to hide out.

A sudden noise to her left made her spin – and then he was behind her, catching her arms and pinning them behind her back.

"Well, well," he said mockingly. "What do we have here?"

"Ryou," Anzu breathed. "They said you'd gone rogue."

His grip on her arm didn't lessen, but he pulled her closer, using his body to pin one of her arms. "I have. I hate this place and everyone in it."

Anzu felt her stomach twist. "You can't mean that."

"I do," he said, now so close that his breath ghosted on her ear. "They all _deserve_ to _die_."

The venom in his voice made her veins freeze. Dimly, she realized he might have lost his mind. The dark ninja were predisposed to mental breakdowns and psychosis.

"Why?" she asked.

Ryou growled and she flinched as his chakra spiked dangerously. "This isn't a game, little girl."

She wanted to scream at him that she knew that and she wasn't stupid, but she knew how dangerous a position she was in. He could kill her easily and no one would be the wiser. Instead, she stayed quiet, refusing to tremble in fear.

Suddenly, his fingers were on her chin, turning her head to look at him.

"Do you want to know why?" he all but hissed. "Do you, really?"

Anzu nodded stiffly.

"Do you know where their precious dark powers come from? I do," he whispered. "I saw it at Kul-Elna."

Kul-Elna? But that was the name of the border town whose inhabitants all disappeared one night, many years ago.

"Our precious dark powers, the source of our unnatural strength, speed and chakra," Ryou paused, smiling bitterly, and finished, "They get them from the dead."

She flinched as her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. She'd heard rumors, terrible rumors, about disappearing bodies and robbed graves, about secret rooms in the village.

"They boil them down, trapping the spirits with forbidden seals, and, when they're nothing more than liquefied, screaming, mad souls, they inject them into people like me," he breathed, his eyes shifting to burning, inhuman red. "Knowing that, do you still want that power? Would you still protect them, little girl?"

Anzu paled.

"We're monsters," Ryou said in a strange high-pitched voice, chakra cracking through his hair, giving him the illusion of horns. For a moment, it seemed like there was someone else in his features, someone different. "We shouldn't exist! And I won't continue protecting them! Not after what I saw them do!"

There was a noise from the nearby streets. People, searching for her, searching for him – she couldn't tell from here.

"Leave," Anzu said. "If they find you, they'll kill you."

Ryou stared at her, his eyes still red.

"Please," she whispered. "You're not a monster to me. You're still my friend and I don't want you to die."

He sighed, letting her go, and sprang up into the trees. He lingered on the branch a moment and looked back at her. "You're stupid to be so loyal, Anzu."

"I know," she gave him a watery smile. "But I don't abandon my friends."

* * *

AN: Related to a fanart I did recently. You can see it on my dA (twinenigma dot deviantart dot com).

Ninja Ryou is probably closer to dark/yami Bakura than normal. Whether or not Ryou and Yugi can actually talk to the souls they were injected with is up to you to decide.

Ironically, the Naruto universe does have a habit of having small oddly-named countries appear out of nowhere, so the idea of a Gaming Country wouldn't be too far-fetched. Goodness knows, Tsunade would be their number one customer.


End file.
